February 20, 2025

Danny Nathan: Driving Innovation and Venture Growth with Apollo 21

54 minutes

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Danny Nathan, founder of Apollo 21, an innovation and product design studio based in New York City.

Learn about the transformative role of emerging technologies like AI, quantum computing, and cloud services in reshaping traditional business models. Danny discusses how Apollo 21 integrates these frontier technologies to solve complex business and operational challenges, helping clients across industries such as healthcare, finance, fitness, and more.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

I focus on layering together the ideals of innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology, helping companies understand what it means to build a culture of innovation, what that looks like from an operational standpoint, and how that perspective shapes how companies are structured and how they approach their work. We then leverage those thoughts to help companies create interesting new products

We work with companies of all sizes, from napkin-stage founders who have an idea but haven’t figured out how to bring it to light or defined what an MVP product might look like to serve their customer needs, to large companies like Bank of America. Interestingly, the problems they’re trying to solve are not exactly dissimilar; it’s a question of scale and customer expectations today and where they want to get to tomorrow.

We’ve found that large companies are not inherently set up well to support the ideals of innovation. As companies grow, they optimise for efficiency and look for ways to wring every dollar out of every penny invested. Innovation is inherently an inefficient process that requires some expenditure on experimentation and trial and error, and that’s difficult to align with the way large companies operate in terms of budgeting.

One of our core values is: Crawl, walk, run. Having run startups ourselves, we’re highly aware of the benefit of starting small, understanding what you’re building, determining where the value is being delivered or not, and iterating on that over time, so we can truly build something that accomplishes a need and gives us an opportunity to figure out where we misstepped along the way.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Gen AI is the elephant in the room today, you can’t help but be aware of it because of the pace it’s coming into fruition. A lot of companies aren’t ready to incorporate it into their workflows.’

‘Start getting your data in order, understand and learning what type of structure and data you need to align to the goal you have for AI use cases in the future.’

‘Figure out ways for your employees to begin interacting with and utilising AI to accomplish the tasks they’re doing today, so they aren’t afraid of it and how to ask the right questions of it to get beneficial responses from it.’

‘One of the things a lot of people overlook is the level of research and understanding of your customer and their needs that should go into the process prior to building anything.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Throughout a roller-coaster career spanning acting, advertising, consulting, technology, and entrepreneurship, Danny Nathan has developed a habit of helping companies create new products and services and launch new ventures.

Known variously as a product person, UX guy, designer, strategist, marketer, creative, and sometimes even "The Cleaner," Danny brings a wealth of experience to every project he undertakes.

Today, Danny is the founder of Apollo 21, an innovation and product design studio based in New York City. Apollo 21 sits at the intersection of business consultancy, product design studio, and venture studio. The company helps organizations foster innovation, leverage venture-driven growth, and remove barriers to scale by building technology that solves complex business and operational challenges.

ABOUT THE HOST

Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet.

If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights.

And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]

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By Sabine VanderLinden

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